


The Bed's Getting Cold

by a_little_hope (orphan_account)



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: "Rey you prickly cactus"-- rey-fucking-lo, (for now) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Demon Hunters, Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blood, Demon Armitage Hux, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Hunter Ben Solo, Ghost Rey, I am not gonna do ghost sex, I might bring in other mythical creatures later who know s, I refuse - Freeform, Magic, Murder, Mystery, Psychic Abilities, Spirit World, Suspense, Violence, also to anyone who might try and plagiarize this fic and turn finn into ben/kylo, fucking jokes on you, i mean i don't get scared easily but if you're squemish or whatever take heed, keeping it open, some things that could be considered horror, there's no way you can do that with this one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-15 13:30:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11806956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/a_little_hope
Summary: Ben Solo has heard many stories about the ghost in the Kenobi mansion, about how many people she killed, and how frightening she was. As a hunter, he knew what he was getting into. He prepared for everything, except for the one thing, and that one thing changes everything.





	1. Prologue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Btw Ben is college age here, 18.   
> Phasma is 20.   
> Mitaka was 19.   
> And Rey is well, dead.

The grounds of the Kenobi mansion had no lighting around them, the grass was unkempt, and everything outside the mansion seemed to be in some sort of disarray. "Why couldn't you bring some fucking mosquito spray, Ben?" Phasma hissed under her breath. 

"Because he never listens to you," Mitaka answered. 

"Ha, fuck you. I'm getting bit now." Ben wasn't listening to either of them. He had his EMF meter by his side and his other hand on the knife. He had known there was no need for the EMF meter at the Kenobi mansion. Everything that went on there was a god damn ordeal, but the beeping came as more of a comfort to him than anything else. There was no visible activity going on inside the mansion, but something still seemed off. Evidently it wasn't just him who thought this, because Phasma and Mitaka had stopped bickering. Ben walked forward carefully, trying not to regret the decision that he had made to come here.  _You've been studying this case for three years now, Ben, get over yourself._ Ben could see the front entrance from where he was, and he knew they wouldn't be able to get in there without being noticed. He motioned to Phasma and Mitaka to come to the side of the mansion with him. 

As he looked closer, he could see a small imperfection that could lead to him being able to get into the basement of the house with Phasma and Mitaka unnoticed. The EMF started going crazy the closer they got. "Turn that shit off, Ben. Someone will hear us." Phasma said. This time Ben listened. He remembered in the research he did, seeing reports that Rey had had an impeccable ability to hear intruders, which made him nervous.  _She's the most violent creature I've ever experienced,_ the hunter ( Paige Tico ) had e-mailed him,  _my sister and I had broken into her mansion when we were drunk. I never found my sister's body and I nearly lost my arm. I think it's incredibly idiotic to go after her, even if you're an experienced hunter. But I will give you a tip, I've heard from other hunters that she will not attack you if you're not wearing anything black or red on your body, and she also likes gifts, make sure to take someone efficient in magic with you, that way you can lure her into a trap and bind her until your done with whatever you need to do._ He had taken everything she had said to heart. No black, no red, and he kept a few small trinkets in his pocket that Phasma had enchanted to be more enticing to spirits. Still, he had a bad feeling about this. 

Mitaka was the first one to go through the hole that lead down to the basement, Ben and Phasma quickly followed. 

The first thing Ben noticed about the room was how cold it was, even for a basement without any air conditioning, it was cold enough that the sides of the walls were starting to frost at the touch. "It was muggy outside," Mitaka said, "Wasn't it?" It had been rather muggy outside, and they all knew it, but no one bothered to respond to his question. 

Ben started to take in his surroundings more as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. The basement was a bare and empty space, save a few tools, some shelves and a few blankets. It wasn't until Phasma motioned up that Ben realized what exactly this basement was. There were large ropes and chains hanging from the ceiling, some of the chains had hooks on the end of it, the ropes were just tied in simple nooses, with sand bags at the top of each one, waiting to fall. 

"This is a torture chamber," Mitaka said. The boy looked like he was going to cry. 

"Calm down, idiot." Phasma hissed. "Remind me why you brought him again?" She asked Ben. Ben wanted to make a joke about how he was easy bate for spirits, but he wouldn't. That would guaruntee their cover being blown. 

Ben pointed to Mitaka, and motioned to the bottom of the stairs. The boy went first, but he didn't reach the end of the stairs. Ben and Phasma watched as darkness began to seep through the wall, tendrils stretching out towards Mitaka before Ben or Phasma could reach him. He disappeared. There was no noise, no sound, but the darkness enveloped him. 

Phasma made a noise, but stopped herself. Ben grabbed her hand and they ran up the stairs and burst into the next room. It was the kitchen. The kitchen wasn't as cold as the basement was. Everything had to be fifty years or older, yet every thing was in perfect condition, the inevitable corrosion of time had not effected this place at all. "What the hell? I don't remember you mentioning that when you listed her abilities." 

"Because as far as I know, they weren't." Ben was trying to stay calm. "We need to find Mitaka and get out of here. So come on, lets keep moving."

"He's probably dead," she hissed. "We should get out of here."

Phasma wasn't wrong. But where would Ben be if he listened to her? He opened the door to his right, presumably leading out to the main living room or a corridor, and the two of them walked into it quietly. "We need to find Rey's room," Ben said. "Set a trap there and once she's bound you can leave."

"I don't think there's just one spirit here, though. You said she's killed mill-" Ben and Phasma stopped. Along the walls they could hear a tap, tap, tapping noise, like there was something on the other side, wanting to alert them of its presence. The tapping grew louder the closer they got, until it sounded more like someone knocking on the walls. 

The two hunters broke into a scream when they heard a scream so ungodly it was almost unhuman. 

Mitaka. 

Ben's blood curdled but that didn't stop him from bolting, Phasma following close behind. The hallway was getting darker and darker as they ran. Shadowy tendrils snaking out and nipping at their feet. There were more screams, and then the sound of a man laughing, his voice echoing demonically through the hallway. Doors began to open and close all around them, enticing them to go into rooms that were most definitely traps.  

Phasma shouted and pointed to the only door that hadn't opened, and the both of them slipped in, and closed the door behind them, locking it too. That's when Ben had enough time to look around.

Noticing that the door had an demon warding incantation on it, written in dried blood, he knew Phasma hadn't had the time to do that. But who had? Another hunter? He wasn't sure. He didn't have too much time to pay attention to that. Phasma pushed him out of the way so she could start setting up extra protection, while Ben looked around. The room had a window on it, where they could easily drop down and escape, but that wasn't the most notable part.

The most notable part was the white and pink lace, the mirror with lightbulbs that had long sense gone out. There was an old picture of a girl and a boy back in the fifties, and as Ben got closer he could tell that it was Rey. This was her room. To one side the room had books on it that hadn't been read in a while, and a record player near her bed as well. Something drew him to the record player, and when he saw it upclose he knew why. There was a piece of paper under it, and on the piece of paper scrolled in messy handwriting, were the words,  _Leave now._

The doors started rattling, and something invisible was scratching at the walls again, and Ben got his knife out, ready to brandish it. Phasma had her gun out. "Ben, we weren't ready for this." She said. "We have to go." He wasn't listening, something was off, maybe it was the scratching, maybe it was the darkness trying to seep through the seams of the doors and being launched back by the demon warding spell on the door. "Ben!" She eventually grew impatient of him and headed for the window. 

He didn't care. 

It was becoming abundantly clear that the monster outside the door was not Rey Kenobi, or if it was, she had grown stronger and could imitate other people's voices. He didn't see the reason that she would though. He readied his knife, ready to swing, because the darkness was starting to sweep down from the ceiling above. 

This could be the end. 

Ben was an idiot, but he wanted to see what this thing was for himself. 

Silence. For a split second the darkness paused, and a sort of protective sphere had been formed around him, and then Ben saw a flash of light, the power nearly blinded him, knocking him off his feet and onto the ground. He saw a whisp of hair, a whisp of a white skirt, and then some hazel eyes before he blacked out. 

* * *

 

Ben Solo woke up in his house, head pounding, and a bunch of missed calls from Phasma, there were bruises all on his body, and one long scratch that he wasn't sure how he got. The trinkets from his pockets were missing. Rey, he thought. He looked back to the missed calls on his phone and then to the door of his house. "Ben!" His mother called from the kitchen. He was about to make a very stupid decision. 

"Coming, mom." But first, finding a way to explain his absence for the past few weeks to his mother.

* * *

 

It was dark in the basement, and Rey tried as hard as she could not to frequent it. But He had crossed the boundaries and gone into her part of the house. He was guarunteed the left, and she the right. Well now she was in the left side, looking for the boy that had been swallowed by Him a few hours ago. 

She found him, covered in black goo, practically gutted from the waist down, with a hook in his shoulder. She didn't know how the boy was still alive, but he moaned in pain, his eyes in shock. "I'm sorry," Rey whispered. She bit her lip and passed her fingers over his eyelids. 

Once they shut, she put her hand through his heart. 

His pained stopped. 

"You're not supposed to be in here," A voice said. Rey turned around. 

"You broke the deal. You know what happens when you break a deal."

He didn't scare her. 

That made him powerless against her. 

He moved into the basement silently, granting her the stairway. "Was just trying to have fun, we haven't had proper visitors in five years?" Rey winced, remembering the poor small girl that He had kept for fun. 

"You are to keep to the left side remember? It stops at the main stairway."

"Do not boss me," He did not make any physical threat. He knew he couldn't against her. 

So with that, she left.


	2. One: A Little String

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phasma forces Ben to go back to the house to look for Mitaka and kill Rey.

_It was cold, too cold for a normal day in Virginia, Rey remembered it raining, the grey skies made it even darker inside the house than it usually was. She stayed in her bed, reading. The house was a little too quiet for her taste, but she tried to listen to the rain pounding against the door to drown out the unsettling silence of the house._

  
_It seemed like an hour had passed and every thing was just a little too quiet. Usually Rey would hear the bustling of the maids and butlers, or her cat mewing somewhere near the door, wanting to be let in, but there was none of that_.  _She was in her bed when she heard it._

_A large thud, and then more silence._

_She looked to the ground and saw a puddle of blood seeping through the carpet under the door. She tried to keep herself from screaming._

_She kept as quiet as possible._

_She had to stay quiet._

 

* * *

 Ben had gone to the bathroom as his mother kept calling him to come down for breakfast. "I'll be down in a minute!" He shouted. "Let me take a shower first, okay?" That shut her up enough so he had time to think. 

He stripped off his clothes and the weird black shit that was on them and went to turn the showerhead on, getting in as quick as he could to scrub off the weird black goo that had possibly been all over the house. 

_Oh god the house..._

_Mitaka..._

He should have felt bad for thinking it, but Ben found himself remembering that Mitaka had no family... No one to miss him. No one to trace him back to Ben and the house they were at. 

Phasma wouldn't say a thing, she wasn't to be worried about. "Ben!"  He turned off the showerhead and jumped out of the shower. Throwing his clothes back into his room and changing into something different. 

"Coming!" He ran down stairs to see Phasma sitting at the table next to his mother. "Huh?" 

"Your girlfriend's here," She said. 

"Gross," Ben rolled his eyes and sat down at the table across from the girl. It looked like there wasn't a scratch on her from last night. 

"I'm not his girlfriend, I don't like men." Phasma said frankly. 

"I know, just said it because it pissed him off. Now I'll leave you too alone. I have things to attend to."

* * *

 Rey was in some place dark. The walls were slicked with some sort of greyish black matter and her hands were stained. 

Stained red. 

Everything was silent. She was panting but she couldn't even hear that. The girl looked around her, trying to get more aware of her surroundings, but looking up only made her feel more panicked than before. She looked down again, putting her hands behind her head and rocking back and forth. The more she rocked, the less panicked she felt.  _Just keep your eyes down._ She thought.  _You won't see the intruders coming. You won't be afraid if you don't know they're coming._ This lulled her out of her state of panick until she felt too tired to be worried any more.

Everything was silent for a while, until she heard the sound of a mewing cat. 

She looked up. 

"BB," She was in her room. Rey looked around and saw her bed and her bookcase and her dresser, and then looked down at the small kitten that was laying next to her lap, it's jaw just slightly exposed. "Hey, girl." Rey whispered. She picked the kitten up and cuddled it in her arms as she walked around her room. "You would think death would lessen the panic attacks, right?" She scratched the kitten behind the ears and watched it mew happily.

The noise was one of the only soothing left in the mansion. 

The only thing that could bring her back from the headache inducing loops that kept her like this. "What did you think of those intruders, BB?" She asked. The cat hissed. "I know... They scared me too. God's hoping they don't come back."

* * *

 

"We need to go back for Mitaka,"

"No we don't," Ben said matter of factly. "He's the least of our worries." Phasma looked like she was about to have a coniption. 

"Listen, asshole. I don't want to have the body show up outside the mansion and be questioned because my dna might be found on him."

Ben rolled his eyes at this. "Couldn't you just alter their memories and get away?"

"I'd prefer not to perform magic on legal authorities, thank you very much. We have to go back. Especially after the dream I had last night."

"A dream, what dream?"

" _Her dream._ " 

Something about the way Phasma said her dream made Ben regret every single decision he had made in life, and as he got up from the table to leave, Phasma moved quicker, grabbing his neck and pushing him down so he was bending backwards over the table. "You were the one who made stupid mistake to see her, now we are going back. Okay?"

"Jesus. Okay."

* * *

 

"Maybe they weren't bad people." Rey told BB as they walked through her half of the mansion. Nothing in it had really changed. There were a few shier and weaker ghosts that had stayed around but nothing that worried her. "Maybe they just wanted to help," Rey was pretty sure that was a lie. But if lies were more comforting than the truth, which one should she tell herself? "Who knows," BB seemed perfectly content with being carried, the kitten's head rested where her beating heart would be. 

"Who knows..."

* * *

 

"I hate life," Ben said as soon as Phasma got in the car. "You didn't even let me get my fucking weapons."

"Because I have better shit in the trunk asshole, but we need to stop at my place first for a few things so we can actually go in prepared." Ben nodded as she stepped on the gas and they started weaving through the streets.  

 "I hate you,"

* * *

 

The sunlight shone through the window, the shadows of the oak leaves dancing on the floor of her grandfather's master bedroom. It was always peaceful in here. 

There was a musty smell that remembered, and it was always warm. Rey set her cat down and closed her eyes. She wanted to know more about the intruders-- _specifically if they were coming back or not._

_She could see the Virginia woods, trees covering roadways and deers at the side of the road._

_She knew what she was looking for._

_Specifically, the heart beat she was looking for._

_The stretch was hard to make, Rey could usually only look a few hundred miles outside of her home, but she was adamant about finding the whereabouts of the intruders. When she found them they were in a woodsy area near the other side of town. She was outside of an average size building that looked slightly run down with glowing signs on the outside that said 'Psychic Shop'._

_Both of the intruders had gotten out of a car and started walking towards the door. Rey walked forward, the strain of being away from her house starting to wear down on her._ _She had to hear what they were saying._

_She stopped after the blonde one closed the door on her._

_There was some kind of warding that prevented her from going through, but she wasn't exactly sure that she wanted to. Rey pressed her head up against the door, listening to them talk._

_"How the fuck do you have so many candles in here? It's going to burn the place down."_

_"Shut up, moron. We need to get the proper tools this time, now that we know that whatever the hell attacked us wasn't a ghost."_

_They weren't hunting her._

_"We need stuff for the ghost too,"_

_"I know. I don't think we should kill her though."_

_Or were they?_

_"Weren't you the one who told me all spirits need to be put to rest?"_

_"Yeah,"_

_"Why are you acting like an idiot now then?"_

_"I don't know... I mean... " Their voices trailed off, and Rey felt a pang in her chest. She was gone too long._

She was back in her grandfathers room. "Their coming back, BB." 

Rey paused, trying to think of what to do. 

For the first time in a while, she didn't know what to do. 

* * *

 

He had convinced Phasma to stay in the car, he would set the trap and get Rey out of the way first. Then he would find Mitaka and get rid of him. Ben wondered if a witch could sense a liar better than the average woman. He had the trap, had a gun, his knife, and enough salt to fill a sea, but he wasn't completely sold on using it just quite yet. He wanted to know why people had said this girl was a brutal ghost, why so many people had died, and what the deal was behind that. Ben was often told he obsessed over the details and that was going to get him killed. 

Maybe it would, but only the brainless shot first and asked questions later.

This time he didn't go through the hole that lead to the torture chamber. 

He went through the front door. In retrospect, it was probably a bad idea to do that, but the door slid open easily and he made it in without making too much noise. This is when he fully noticed the way the main entrance was built. One side of the entrance was brighter than the other, warmer than the other, and the furniture was perfectly in place. The other side, the side he had entered on, it was colder, every thing was slightly askew. 

Ben took a step forward when he heard her voice.

"You would think that when a supernatural being saves your life, you would take that as a God given sign to leave, and not to look back." She was at the top of the stairs, wearing a white night gown, her hair bouncing down in loose curls to the middle of her back, her skin was a pale white, her fingers tinged light blue. "So what is it? I assume you're here to kill me, but I don't see the blonde." She seemed bored. 

"That's not why I came here."


	3. Two: Ghosts, Sarcasm, and Magical Fuckery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something... off happens.

Ben rolled his eyes at her remark. "Oh god, are you Catholic?" Rey cocked her head to the side, confused. 

"No," She replied. "I'm just saying coming here is... idiotic." The girl's form flickered and suddenly she was at the bottom of the stairs, behind him and back to the bottom of the stairs again. He looked to her hands and saw her gripping his knife by the wooden handle. "Now if you're looking for the boy you left behind, he's not here. His body is completely gone... at least the parts you were worried about." Ben swallowed and swallowed heard.  _How did she know?_ "I put his bones to rest properly. Neither you or your..." Her face contorted slightly in disgust as she said the word, "... Witch would be in trouble with anyone. So you can leave." Ben didn't budge. 

"That's not all I'm here for, I want to know what that thing that attacked me was."

"The thing that attacked you was another resident of the house," She sounded bored, twirling the wooden handle of the knife between her fingers, careful to keep the cruel iron blade away from her hands. "He doesn't like being disturbed, and you like many other idiotic hunters entered in His realm. I cannot help people there." That didn't make sense to Ben. All the reports he had read said that Rey was the spirit that had killed so many innocent college kids and hunters every single year. Clearly not all of them were wrong, right? "You should go. It's clear your not that experienced at this, so come back when you're ready to... Actually do your hunting job."

That stung, just a little, but Ben seemed to be pushed out of whatever fixated mood he had been in just seconds before. He remembered that this was just another threat in the end. 

Just another threat. 

He lunged forward, and grabbed the blade of his knife. It sliced into his hand, but his adrenaline was running, and he barely even noticed. 

The spirit in front of him was taken in surprise by his sudden outburst and dropped the knife, he picked back up again, bringing it in a cruel ark down where her throat would be. 

Her form flickered again and she was behind him. There was more blood on her dress than before, his blood perhaps. "Oh, so you have a temper?" He swung again and she rematerialized a few feet away. The more Ben looked at her, the more he swore that the girl's eyes were darkening in color, her pupils widening until her eyes were just black. "Lets play a game then, see how your temper helps you then."

* * *

 Ben felt the house shift and warble around him, furniture began to shake ominously, and he couldn't help but silently think  _Oh shit, what have I done now?_

The furniture started to go crazy, creating a whirlwind of hazardous objects that could very well kill him if he didn't move fast enough. Forturnately, he got the hint, moving up the side of the stairs as quickly as possible. 

He was starting to feel disoriented, like any minute he was going to throw up the food he had eaten earlier. But he kept going. He was determined to figure her out, and put an end to her if possible.

* * *

 

Rey laughed, trying to hide her anxiety with an act. She had done this before. Scared the shit out of people to make sure they never came back, before returning to years of solitude, it always seemed to work. First she would play with their vision, move the furniture, and force them more into her territory than His. Next, the hallucinations. 

 

* * *

 He could hear her laughing at the bottom of the stairwell as he turned into another hallway. Ben still felt like he was going to throw up, but he cleared his mind as possible. "Note to self," He hissed, "stop pissing people off." The walls were lined with a sort of black goo that Ben had never seen before. 

It slickened everything and made it harder to run, let alone walk. Whispers seemed to echo through the hallway. "Help us," and "Burn her," being amongst the suggestions given to him. 

"This is starting to piss me off," He groaned. The goo was still seeping through the seems of the hallway, and it was coming through one door more than the others. Ben opened the door to something he didn't want to see. 

* * *

 

Phasma was starting to regret sending in Ben by hisself, after twenty minutes had gone by, she finally got out of the car and began to head for the door. She had a bag of rock salt, a rosary, and some holy water in her pocket. 

Ben was always incompetent but never  _this incompetent._ The place smelled of sulfur. The smell was overwhelming, compared to the small hint of the smell that she had noticed the first time they came to the house. 

She opened the door, slowly, and then closed it. Drawing a line of salt at the entrance, and then a large, disfigured circle that allowed her to walk forward enough to meet the bottom of the stairs. 

She could hear screaming, and whispering, and an odd squelching sound. 

"Hey!" 

* * *

 

He had found the room.

The floor was covered in at least two inches of the black goo, and was pitch black when he decided to go in. 

It was a stupid, impulsive decision, especially since Rey could just very well kill him in the room. 

But there was something here that he was needed to see. 

He could tell. 

He could hear more whispers. 

But they weren't just any whispers.

They were hers. 

Her whispers. 

Her screams. 

* * *

 

_She had started to crawl out the window when he broke into her room, and she was dragged by her feet back into the room. Her head hit the window cill, and she could feel blood flowing from her forehead._

_She wasn't going down that easily though. The girl jabbed her elbow backwards into her attackers neck and ran out the door and down the hallway, towards the door._

_She stopped when she saw all the blood. The butlers. Her tutor, the stable boy, they were all dead._

_The nauseating paralyzation was enough for the killer to catch up with her. He brought his knife down on her shoulder first._

* * *

 

"You really think a little salt is enough to stop the spirits in this house." The ghost at the bottom of the stairs was not Rey, but the dead sister of the hunter they first contacted. "You're even more amateur than that tall guy if you think that." The windows opened and a gush of wind rushed through the living room, all the salt blew over to the darker part of the neighborhood. "Don't worry," She said. "If you stay over on her side He won't kill you."

"Who are you talking about?"

"He's the reason we're all here," The girl says. Phasma watched as a black liquid starts to seep out of the girl's eyes and ears. "He's the reason she's here too. He's always wanted a witch to play with."

Phasma felt a splitting pain in her head and she put her finger to her ear. The same black liquid. "Nice try," The witch said, "but you're going to have to do better than that." She reached into her pocket and through a bit of iron filings at her. The girl shrieked.  The woman had been taught how to do this trick before, but she had never performed it aloud. " _Hoc animo uri, Sunken mitto eam in loco sancto, protegas me dicit Dominus._ _Hoc animo uri, Sunken mitto eam in loco sancto, protegas me dicit Dominus_." 

The filings glowed a bright orange, as the spirit quite literally burned, before dissipating into nothingness. 

 

* * *

 The room was awful. Bodies were in the black goo, children, some of the butlers, and hunters. All charred, but also liquidating. "What the hell?"

The lights flickered for a second and they were no longer there. "Will you go now?" A voice said softly. "Now that I've shown you just a fragment of what can happen here?" 

He looked for Rey, but could not find her. Her voice bounced off the walls of the room. "What is this place?"

"It's where he opened the spirit world, the goo, the blackness, it's all a residue of the things that come into this house."

"Who's He?"

She appeared. Her white night gown dragging across the black liquid. Her aura looked brighter in here than it had before. He could see a stain blossoming in the corner of her dress. "Go," Rey picked him up by one hand around the collar, she was freezing, Ben tried to get free of her, but her grip was like iron. She threw him, and the door buckled with his weight. The next thing he knew, Phasma was by his side, grabbing him beneath the waste and standing him up. 

"We need to go,"

 

* * *

 


	4. Chapter Three: Silence, Spirits, and Worship

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> lectis quattuor unum aliquid

Rey was back in her room. Everything was silent since the hunter had left. Everything unusually darkened on other side of the house. The ghosts that hadn't bothered to show when the conundrum was happening were now whispering amongst themselves. _"Quae sors ejus discindantur! Fila telarum. Morningstar restitch in hoc mundo."_ They would whisper. Rey felt nauseous. Paralyzed to her seat next to the window. Her kitten sat at her feet, trying to find out what was wrong with her owner " _eam coepi sanguinis tui sanguis tuus calidus sanguis, et tandem quid habes ut iustificeris._ "

"I don't know what that means," She whispered. 

" _eam coepi sanguinis tui sanguis tuus calidus sanguis, et tandem quid habes ut iustificeris."_

"I don't understand what that means!" Rey shrieked. The air popped from the pressure that had built up in her chest. 

She looked down, and didn't like what she saw. 

Or rather, what she remembered seeing. 

* * *

  _The knife had sank into her shoulder and she felt the most excruciating burning pain she had ever felt in her life. The knife exiting her shoulder was worse, but she took that as a chance to stop on her attackers foot, and bite the hand that had wrapped itself around her, and hard. The man cursed and she ran for the lamp, trying her best to avoid all the dead bodies._

_The man was wearing a mask, so she couldn't make out his face._

_She decided she didn't care, and swung for his head. The ceramic shattered over his head and he fell to the ground._

_Rey was bleeding and she was bleeding fast._

_She felt disoriented and ran for the stairs, going up to the phone on the second floor. Taking it as long as the cord would muster and locking herself in one of her tutors rooms._

_She put a chair in front of the door._

_The first person she could get on the phone was Finn Storm._

_Her best friend._

_"Rey?"_

_"Finn! Oh my god! Listen please I need your help." She was talking fast._

_She knew when the attacker fully recovered from the lamp being smashed over his head he'd cut the line. "Rey, what's wrong?"_

_"There's a man in the house. He's killed all the butlers and I don't know what to do. I'm bleeding..." Her adrenaline was the only thing numbing the pain at this point. "Please... Call the police... Something. I don't know if I have much longer."_

* * *

 

A letter.

From Finn. 

Rey wasn't sure how long ago it had been. 

It was clear he never sent this, so how did it end up in her house?

 The letter read,

_Dear Rey,_

_I am afraid that I will not be able to put flowers on my grave myself as I am failing in health. Old age isn't always flattering._

_I hope you will forgive me._

_I hope that your soul is resting in heaven and that the injustices done to you are done causing you pain._

_I only wish that you had stayed on this Earth longer._

_Sadly, that was not meant to be._

_Just know I never forgot about you,_

_Finn_

Rey took in a sharp breath, despite needing to. She picked up her cat and let it rest on her shoulder, it's claws letting it stick to her clothes. 

"You needed to see," She turned to see Him, standing at the edge of her bed, several feet away from her. 

"Get out," she said. The air became very hot. 

Much hotter than the cool chill that He kept in his torture chamber. 

 "What? Don't want company?"

"I don't like demons." She looked to the bottle of holy water she had on her desk. She kept it there so He knew to stay away. 

He was getting more and more brazen lately. "Oh come on, sweetheart. We both know you want attention."

Rey almost gagged. "What do you want?"

"Access to the garden at least. You confined me to this house, and it's getting rather boring--"

"No." He obviously didn't like that. His face contorting in a way that no human could. "I believe we have been over this several times. I gave you enough room to roam, and the allowance to do what you want as long as you're on your side of the house, and it is going to stay like that."

The bed post crunched under His grip and without hesitation, Rey sent the Holy water flying. Without a second thought, He was gone. 

* * *

 

_The bedroom was quiet._

_Her bedroom was quiet._

_It was nighttime and there were crickets chirping outside. Ben was sitting on the beg, looking at all the warding spells. They looked decayed. Like they had been washed off by someone. He looked to a corner, a girl seemed to be frantically rewriting them in fresh blood. "If you're smart, you'll help me with this." He got up, but he wasn't sure if it was of his own free will._

_"Where did you get the blood?"_

_"You," She said. "You cut your wrist when I threw you out a door." She wouldn't look him in the eye when she wrote the sigils down. He dipped his fingers in some of his own blood and started writing a few latin wards that always seemed to do the trick against demons._

_"Thanks for that by the way,"_

_"I'm assuming you're sleeping it off," She said. "It's not like a ghost hasn't thrown you around before." Soon she stopped writing the sigils and wards. He took that as a cue to stop as well._

_The whole bedroom was covered in blood._

_"Still doesn't mean I appreciate my own blood being used for warding spells,"_

_"Sorry," She rolled her eyes._

_"Now why am I really here?"_

_She was silent for a while before Ben repeated the question. The girl turned around with tired eyes and a tired face, and for the first time, it was hard to say that the girl wasn't living. She looked so lonely, almost desparate for attention, yet tired and callous. "Because for some reason you care. I can't figure it out yet, and honestly I don't want to, because your meddling is only going to get you killed." Something about the way she said that chilled Ben. Maybe it was the way she walked toward him, tugging at the collar of his jacket ever so slightly, and biting her lip... He shook his head. This was a manipulation tactic. "I need your help," she said. "There's a person. A friend. He's still alive. I need you to find him. I need you to talk to him."_

_"Why can't you do it?"_

_"Because my body is somewhere in this house, asshole, and I don't know if you knew this but ghosts can't leave the place where their corpse is."_

_"Fine. Who is it?"_

_"Finn. Finn Storm."_

* * *

 

Ben didn't like the idea of doing the bidding of a ghost, but he was already at the retirement home. "We're all going to die anyway," he sighed as he got out of his car. Maybe this Finn knew something else about Rey that he didn't. Maybe he knew where Rey was buried. 

It didn't take much to slip past the nurses. Something told him where the man was. The rooms were quiet and depressing, but he found Finn in the room with the most sunlight. The old man seemed to be engrossed in the tv in front of him, not paying any attention to Ben. The boy cleared his throat, and Finn looked up. "Oh, you're new." He said. Something about that simple sentence made Ben want to smile. But he refrained from it. 

"Hello, Mr. Storm, My name is Ben Solo. Do you mind if I talk to you for a couple of minutes." Finn gestured from his bed to a small lumpy leather couch. Ben sat. 

"I haven't had a visitor in a while," The man said. "It's nice to have someone to talk to besides the nurses."

"Pleasure to be here, sir."

"What do you want?" 

Ben froze for a second. All Rey told him was to find this man. "I have information on a friend of yours that I thought you might want to hear." No going back now. "Information on Rey Kenobi,"

 


	5. Chapter 4: Lying, Guilt, and a whole bunch of things Ben regrets

The old man suddenly became interested. "You said--"

"Ssh, yes I did. You have to be very quiet now okay?"The man nodded. He understood. Ben started to explain that one of her dresses was found in a ditch near the old mansion, and how her case had been reopened. He hated lying to him, but when he saw how his eyes lit up at that news, he couldn't help but think that maybe what he was doing would help. "I just want you to tell me what you know about the night, okay?"

"Yes, I can do that. I still remember it all too well." Ben nodded in sympathy, "The first I had heard of it was when Rey called me. She told me there was someone in the house, and that I needed to call the police. “When I got to Rey’s manor, it was already too late. Everyone who had been in the house was already dead, and I went to look for Rey, careful not to touch anything because you know a black man surely would’ve been found as guilty even if the man was innocent. I found a blood trail that had to the basement, and I tried to prepare myself for what I was about to face. She wasn’t down in the basement though, and there was no sign of the culprit left. I guess there must be proof now that you found a dress of hers, yes? Have you found her body?”

“Sadly, we haven’t found her body.” Ben had to watch the hopefulness briefly dim from his face. “but the dress she was murdered in was found, and with that hopefully some DNA of the killer on it.” It was only a half lie. _Okay, it was a full lie,_ but Ben was sure that the moon had been living with this eating away at his mind for the better part of fifty something years. 

“Thank you, Mr. Solo. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Ben said, “I just thought you needed to hear this information. I’m glad that I could hopefully ease your mind a little.”

* * *

 

“ _Thank you,_ ” Rey could hear him, his words were becoming weaker with age, it was becoming harder to breathe and harder to think for him. And yet for some reason he still held on. Rey wished that none of this had happened, not so she could have lived out her years normally and stay with Finn until they’d both been old and grey, but so he wouldn’t feel the need to hang on to something. She sighed, picking up her cat as she sat on the roof again.

“Come here, BB… I need some love.” The cat was always attentive to her needs. She closed her eyes and let the world disappear. This time she seemed to be able to phase out all the distractions around her without flashing back to that awful, awful day. She didn’t know how long she’d been there by the time Ben’s car was in her driveway again. He was looking up at the roof. He didn’t say anything. Rey materialized close to him, stopping at the stairs of the porch that lead up to the large doors of the mansion. 

“I did what you asked,” He said. “Felt kind of dirty, I lied to him.”

Rey was silent for a long while, she hadn’t asked him to do that, and yet he had. A while ago she might have been mad at him, but Finn was on his last thread in this Earth, and he deserved some peace of mind in his old age. “You made him feel better, you gave him hope.” Ben nodded, refusing to look Rey in the eye. The both of them fidgeted awkwardly in their respective places. Rey put her kitten down and let it run. “Why are you still here? You can go and just forget about me.”

“Call me stupid, but I don’t really think that’s possible.”

“Why?”

“There’s something about your story that I need to know, something you’re not telling me, or something you don’t even know. You didn’t deserve what happened to you.”

* * *

 

_The man had found her, she knew that it was inevitable, and she knew that she was going to die, but that didn’t stop her from deciding that  she was not going to down without a fight, she brought the telephone down on the man’s head and kicked him in the stomach, it was just enough for her to get halfway down the hallway before he stopped her. He grabbed her by her dress and pulled her down the stairs until she was unconscious._

* * *

 

"You're okay, Ben Solo." She said. 

"Thanks," 

"Do yourself a favor and never come here again. You're right, but it's something that you can't solve." 


End file.
